I wouldn't put c++ in the same category as Java. C++ has many layers of "stuff" (templates, macros, etc) while the Java compiler is so simple that you can easily do a reverse-compile.

Personally, I'd rather have a useful syntax and maybe a standard parser that gives easy access to the parse tree. I wrote a Javascript-to-Javascript compiler (that did optimization and correctness checks along the way) once and the fact that JS has syntax wasn't a big problem. (especially since I ripped off the parser from Rhino)